


Lights will guide you home, and I will try to fix you

by bellamees



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Clarke-centric, Doctor Clarke, F/M, First Kiss, Friendship, Grief/Mourning, Hurt Bellamy, Hurt Clarke, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Canon, Post-Mount Weather, Protective Bellamy, Protectiveness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-18
Updated: 2015-02-18
Packaged: 2018-03-13 13:12:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3382805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bellamees/pseuds/bellamees
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clarke narrates ten days that follow the end of the war against Mount Weather.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lights will guide you home, and I will try to fix you

**Author's Note:**

> I’m a sucker for angst. Don’t get me started on post-war angst. It’s all I ever want to write about, for eternity. Y'all should just give me some fluff prompts so I can put an end to this.

**Day one.**

The first night is the worst night for all of us. Not because we’re not taking consolation over the fact that most of us came out of the war alive, but because most of us came back in pieces. Our souls shredded, exhausted, stained. Our bodies hurt, broken, impaired. Our blemishes keep us awake through the night and, even though the Camp sits silent and peaceful, not one of us closes our eyes, afraid — like reality could crumble, like we’d be sucked back into nightmares we lived. I watch Bellamy on the other side of medical, staring into space, and I want to walk over him, hold his hand. I don’t do it. I give him space. We have spoken briefly when we met again; hushed words I could barely remember now. There wasn’t enough time to talk.

I check the rising body count as another dies a couple of beds away. People run around us, closing wounds, performing small surgeries, saving lives. I could be helping, but I’m looking at Bellamy instead. He doesn’t look like the same person anymore — like he’s glitched, Raven would say. I want to know what he sees beyond the metalic roof. I want many things I can’t have. So I finally look away, going back into more immediate tasks, blood all over my hands. It won’t wash away, ever. Bellamy doesn’t spare a look at me.

**Day two.**

Lexa’s body is burned alongside many of her warriors. I see it from the Camp, the pire glowing orange in the green horizon. So many people died, but so many people _lived_. We should all be grateful for that — and yet, I can’t feel it. I feel hollow, stolen of my feelings, barren. My mother saw it coming, I realize. I see movement with the side of my eyes, and I know it before I can properly see him. Bellamy walks out of the Ark, still covered in blood, still broken, inside and out. He sees me, and he nods. I imagine his voice — _hey, princess_ — and I feel sick to my stomach. Guilt straps my feet on the ground so tightly I can’t move. I could have sent him to die. My face feels flushed, my body anxious. I turn my eyes back to the fire and its black smoke, carrying people’s soul into whatever is waiting next, I bid my good-byes to Lexa, letting her go. Octavia finds her way to her brother, holding him, helping him. I’m glad she’s there.

“Clarke,” Raven’s disembodied voice comes out on the radio on my waist. Even through static, her tone is somber. “You’re needed in medical.”

“I’ll be right there,” I tell her. Walking down towards the medical ward, I glance at Bellamy. He’s not talking, his eyes still fixed on things no one else can see. _There’s children here, Clarke_ , I remember him saying, _we need a plan that doesn’t kill everyone_. No one else came out of that moutain alive, though. We couldn’t save anyone else, the breach made sure of that, so we saved ourselves, our people, and a portion of the Grounders. _It’s a war, Clarke, people die_. Octavia is talking, holding his hand softly, and Bellamy stares and stares, like a blind man, never seeing anything. It’s horrifying. I walk faster, disappearing inside the Ark.

**Day three.**

“Help him,” Octavia demands. “You have to talk to him, Clarke, I’ve tried and—”

“Bellamy’s in shock,” I say gently, avoiding looking into her eyes, knowing I’ll see the kind of hopelessness I don’t want to see. We’re both sitting outside, right next to Bellamy’s tent, speaking in whispers. I eventually found my way to his tent earlier, almost unknowingly, waiting there, like I belong, holding a medical kit with trembling fingers. I wanted to go in all day, but never did. “He needs some time.”

“But you can—”

“What makes you think he’ll talk to me?” Octavia certainly dislikes my tone, I don’t like it either. It’s cold, detached, like Bellamy’s someone I used to know a long time ago and not necessarily care. I do care. I care too much for my own good. “If he hasn’t talked to you.”

“My brother went there _for you_ ,” if she decides to spit at me, I won’t judge her. I almost expect her to. “Now _you_ find a way to fix him.”

I suddenly want to scream at her. To tell her to stop guilt-tripping me because I can do that on my own, thank you very much. But I don’t. I brush her off of me, pushing her away, throwing myself into the tent before I can hear another word. Bellamy isn’t sleeping, which is nothing new. None of us slept yet. We’re like a small army of cadaveric, sleep-deprived war survivors; made of nightmares and broken bones. He looks at me this time, as I sit next to him on the bed. “Are you okay?” I regret asking the moment the words come out of my mouth. To find something to do with my hands, I check his wounds, slowly, feeling his eyes on me.

“That’s a fucked up question, Clarke.”

I’m overwhelmed by his voice. It sounds hoarse and apathetic, but it’s his voice. Like on the radio. I almost feel like crying, but I don’t. There aren’t more tears left. “I’m sorry,” I say. Apologies are fragile, and mine feels like crystal, slipping in between the cracks between Bellamy and I. If I close my eyes, I can see it shattering.

“Did you sleep?” He ignores my apology, eyes black and void.

“Not yet,” I tell him, rolling his sleeves to check on the wounds on his arms. It scares me how easily Bellamy lets me touch him, how still his body is, like he can’t feel my fingers prying on his skin. “There’s a lot to do in medical.” Harper and Monty are still in bad shape, I want to say, but I spare him the details. Instead, I tell him Miller’s out of danger and Jasper got away with barely a few scratches — Bellamy looks slightly pleased, relieved, even. That’s the surface, of course. We’re all repairable, somehow. Bellamy flinches when I pull up his shirt, and I stop halfway. “Does it hurt?”

“Not physically.” There’s sadness in his voice, and shame, and fear. We look at each other for what feels like a long time, but it really isn’t. Time has been moving slowly around us, that’s all, lazy and unwanted. I want to know what he sees when he thinks no one’s looking, what lurks in his shadows, what troubles his nights. If he shares his demons with me. Finally, Bellamy inhales soundly, nodding — _go ahead_. I pull up his shirt, cleaning his wounds. We don’t say anything else until I leave.

**Day four.**

I feel like Doctor Frankenstein — or a fucked up, insane mortician. It’s getting to me, putting those people together. I’ve been cold and surgical and precise, like people expect me to be, like Lexa told me to be. Sewing organs and skin, patching up people full of holes, like they’re dolls for me to play with. The ground turns into a personal hell, and I catch myself hoping for the Ark again, suspended in the nothingness of space, the buzzing of machines and oxygen systems, the calmness of artificial life, of artificial living.

And there’s Bellamy. Octavia told me he slept for a couple of hours, and woke up screaming. Really screaming, thrashing against his sister, searching madly for an invisible gun to protect himself from ghosts. It took him a while to settle down. I orbit around him like I’m the moon around Earth, eclipsing myself from his view, but there, watching. _You’re stalking him_ , Raven had said, _it’s ridiculous, Clarke_. It very much is, yes. I can’t help it. I want to make sure he’s okay, but I know he’s not. Right now he’s waiting for someone to check his stitches in medical, and I waver, feet faltering. Somebody comes to his aid, we exchange looks. I look away first, embarrassed.

When I finally sleep, sitting in a corner of the medical ward, listening to IV drips and machine beeps, my nightmares are full of death. _You couldn’t save everyone_. It’s Bellamy’s voice, and I stir awake, heart beating wildly inside my chest. He’s on the other side of the ward, looking at me.

**Day five.**

He’s talking again, and helping around Camp. I see him sitting with Jasper and the others at some point of the day, and it looks so casual, like nothing bad has ever happened to any of them. It makes me feel a little bit better — not about myself, but better, just better. Harper joins in, a shy smile on her face, and they share knowing hugs, _I know, I know, there, there_. She’s the one who screams the loudest whenever she sleeps, I know.

Bellamy and I still barely speak to each other, and the inhuman sense of restraint in our actions is what hurts the most. There wasn’t enough of it before — I’d scream at him, he’d complain, we’d discuss problems, our voices loud, ringing above any other, contrasting. Now our voices are quiet, our conversations dull. I miss him terribly, vividly, every day. “Clarke, you’re needed in medical,” someone’s voice calls me out. That awful phrase. I want to hurt whoever said it, but I just turn and go back in, to allay, to blood and bruises and the smell of ether. _I am become death_.

**Day six.**

“You should take a break.”

It’s Bellamy’s voice behind me, and it’s his hand on my shoulder, comforting and strong. There’s not many people in medical left. We’ve done what we could with the resources we have — there isn’t much medicinal plants and a weak stock of antibiotics can do. I’m holding onto one of Lexa’s warrior’s hand, it’s cold and unmoving; dead. Bellamy’s hand squeezes my shoulder tighter, his fingers pressuring onto my skin, alive, well. “I’m tired.” It’s the first time I’ve said it since coming back from Mount Weather. It feels like letting go of rocks in my pockets, floating a little bit closer to the surface, weightless.

He takes me through the Ark corridors, a color combination of grays and whites flashing around me. Outside it’s a chilly night, and I feel cold as he takes me towards one of the fire pits, making me sit, pushing a small portion of food onto my hands. It smells good, but I don’t feel like eating. “You don’t have to stay there all day, Clarke,” he starts, sitting on the other side of the fire, turning golden orange in its flickering light. “It’s not good for you.”

“I’m needed in there.” My response is flat and mechanical. Bellamy shakes his head, and I smile at him, suddenly so, _so_ glad he’s there. “You look well.”

“I’m okay,” he tells me, gesturing to the bowl he gave me. _Eat it, Clarke_. I take a bite of the bread. “Coming to terms.” _Coming to terms_. I take him in, his clean face, no more dirt, no more dried blood. The deep purple bruises, the stains on his shirt, the dark circles under his eyes. The bandages showing up from under his sleeves, the hole on his jacket where the bullet got him. Every little thing a reminder that I’ve done it — I caused it. I sent him there on his own. _It’s worth the risk_. Bellamy seems to know what I’m thinking, looking mildly upset. “You have to stop blaming yourself.”

“I’m not.” _Liar_.

“I never blamed you,” He continues, unfaltering voice and all, like he’s a different person from the weak, solem Bellamy I saw a couple of days ago. Maybe he is. Maybe that was just somebody else. “No one blamed you. You did what you had to do.”

I don’t say anything else, because I can’t. I’ve been told that before, in several different ways — Octavia, Raven, Kane, even Lexa, before she passed. _You’re the leader, Clarke. You do what you have to do, don’t think of the consequences, they won’t drag you into a bottomless river to drown — don’t be weak_. It doesn’t sound any distinct when Bellamy says it, it doesn’t make any better. I won’t be able to wash my hands from the blood, like my mother predicted, not right now, not so soon. I push food into my mouth, to keep me away from saying anything.

Bellamy seems to respect my silence, and he sits there, for a while, keeping me company. At some point he stands up, gives me a kiss on the forehead and leaves, avoiding the coming conflict of good-nights. My forehead burns where he touched me, and I finish eating alone. I feel a little less barren when I’m done.

**Day seven.**

A week. I can’t believe it. The world seems to be slowly going back to what it was, but less harsh, less scary for most of us — the lack of an enemy does that to people. Camp Jaha seems fuller, and I start to hear the first sounds of laughter here and there. The horrors are being forgiven, one day at the time, like it happened so many times in history. We won’t forget, but we’ll live, we’ll survive, somehow. _It’s what humans do_ , Raven said the other night, as we shared moonshine, clinking our bottles together. It’s what humans do.

“Hey, princess.” My body tenses as Bellamy sits beside me. I’ve been hiding away in the now empty medical ward, sitting on one of the surgery tables, another bottle of moonshine tucked in my hands, the lingering alkaline smell of amonia keeping me company. I find the drink helps keeping darkness at bay, loosing up the knots under my skin, making me feel things again. The bottle is pretty much empty already. Bellamy grasps his fingers on mine as takes the bottle away. “The kids are looking for you.”

“I’m needed in medical,” I whisper, possibly (certainly) drunk. I think I hear Bellamy chuckle, but I don’t look at him. Instead, I sigh, looking at the now empty hands on my lap, clean, but unclean. Bellamy pulls me closer, then, putting an arm across my shoulders, and for some reason the gesture makes me want to cry. I don’t. I hold it in, because I need it. I let him comfort me, though, because I also need it. He rocks our bodies to some unheard lullaby, slowly, stroking my arm gently. “My head hurts.”

“You’re drunk,” there’s a hint of humour in his voice. “Glad I lived to see it happening.”

“You’re being an asshole.”

I feel like laughing — so I do. It starts as a chuckle that I try to control, until my body is shaking with it, and Bellamy is laughing too. I don’t know why I’m laughing. I don’t know why he’s laughing. Maybe I’ve gone crazy from the trauma. Maybe it’s a brain tumor, who the fuck knows. My laughter burns out my throat, and at some point I’m crying, it’s all confusing and distorted. _Why am I crying?_ Bellamy stays until everything is over, until my feelings are all dripping onto the metal table, falling in puddles on the ground, until he’s soaking wet in them, still firmly holding me, like I might fall into my own darkness at any given moment. I don’t remember how it goes then, but at some point I find myself in bed, and my forehead is burning, tingling even, in a good way. I sleep soundly for the first time.

**Day eight.**

It’s a mourning day. The dead are silently celebrated — flowers are given, like in old times. We’re scared to burn them, we’re scared to toss their bodies into nothingness, like we did in space. So we keep them, we name them, we cherish them, we remember them. Camp Jaha is quiet and still as my mother speaks. _They’re all heroes to us_. I find my way through the crowd until I’m standing next to Bellamy. “In peace, may you leave the shore. In love, may you find the next. Safe passage on your travels until our final journey to the ground. May we meet again,” his voice sounds peaceful, breathy in the silence, his eyes closed. I love him a little bit just there, his prayer, his soul. I don’t look at him when I hold his hand. It takes him a moment — and I can feel him staring at me, wondering, searching for something on my face — until he presses our fingers together.

**Day nine.**

We decide to spend the night at the dropship for the first time since the war’s end. Jasper comes up with the idea, of course. We leave in the evening, the remaining of the hundred, not as many as we started out with, but intact somehow, _together_. The dropship is still there, already being taken by nature, no more walls surrounding it. Someone lights a fire, and soon there’s moonshine being passed around, and the low voices become lounder as the bottles pass by. There are no guards — although we brought weapons, pushed into our hands by unknowing adults — there’s no fear. We’ve been stripped bare of it.

“I’m glad you came,” Bellamy is looking at the once deliquents, and I like the look on his face. There’s less pain, more life. There’s pride, and protectiveness. It’s Bellamy all over, and I beam at him, unseen. “I thought you wouldn’t want to.”

“This is home,” I say, turning my eyes in other directions, feeling my body grow hot. Suddenly we’re not so broken anymore, and I have a hard time dealing with things that aren’t — our cracks have been shut, leaving the scars to remind us of them, the new skin full of memories. Bellamy offers me his bottle, and I let myself take a sip of it, a long one. We sit down next to where once was his tent, somehow apart from the cheerful voices, as I still don’t feel like I belong to the light enough to be in it. “They look happy.”

“They’re safe — we did it.” _We did it_ , I agree, silently. I take another long sip of his bottle, not really knowing what to say, and Bellamy motions to take the bottle from me. I swing it away from his hand. “Don’t get yourself drunk again.”

“You put me in bed.” It’s a strange thing to say, but I want to. I watch him as he tears his eyes from me, looking self-conscious and out of place, his neck getting just a bit of crimson rush. I relish in the feeling of making him uncomfortable, smiling.

“I couldn’t leave you there.” My mind works hard to remember it, but moonshine worked its magic on me. It’s all a blank, and I fill it in with self-made images that never happened. I offer him the bottle back, and he drinks all that’s left. Probably to keep me from drinking more. We watch the others, and it feels a little bit like we’re back in another time and dimension. I look up, where the Ark would have been in the past, but the sky only shows me stars. The flimsy boundaries of time — we can see stars millions of years away, in their past, our future, but we can’t go back to our own. I sigh. It’s all very confusing. “What’s on your mind?”

“Time,” I reply, shrugging. “Relativity.”

“Thoughts befitting of a space princess,” Bellamy smiles. “You should try to have fun. You’ve conquered the right to.”

 _I will_ , I assure him, in a small voice. Bellamy stands up, pulling me with him, and we stand there, sharing personal space we wouldn’t have before. He kisses my forehead, his hands soft and warm against my face.

**Day ten.**

When morning comes, we march our way back to Camp Jaha, stumbling, drunk, sleepy, fearless. It sits there, the Camp, on the clear, distorted and bizarre against nature, like a creature from a future world. Bellamy walks ahead, an arm around Octavia’s waist, and their voices reach me in vowels and consonants apart. She takes off running at some point, screaming as Jasper and Monty follow, and they’re all laughing, in that drunk-manner people often do. I stop walking before getting to the gates, exhausted. Bellamy is the only one there now, waiting for me. _Day ten_ , I tell my self, _we’re still here_.

We stand there a couple of of feet apart, taking large gulps of air, like we’ve been underwater, gaping at each other. His hair is tossled, and his breath comes out frozen in the chilly air. Bellamy looks real, and well, and alive, and lively. There’s still something inside his eyes — the sharp pain that sometime stings our chests — but I’m sure there’s something inside my eyes, too. The clinging ghosts behind our retinas, bringing back our demons whenever we close our eyes. I smile at him, feeling raw and cold and alive, for the first time since we came back. _We did it_.

Bellamy closes the distance between us, and I hope for another kiss on my forehead, closing my eyes, holding my breath in. But he kisses me — _really_ kisses me — instead. Our bodies stumble on our feet, clashing awkwardly, and I feel like melting under his touch, like my bones are made of chiffon. Bellamy is all moonshine, and my lungs burn inside my ribcage, but breathing seems as distant as everything else right now. _We’re still here,_ I say through my breath _, we’ve made it, we’re okay,_ and he whispers back _, we’re okay, I love you, I love you_.

“Finally!” The shouts come from the Camp, and we break apart to watch Octavia pointing at us. Jasper screams _Get a room!_ , and Bellamy feels all hot on his neck. We both laugh, and we decide it’s better to go after them before they wake everyone up. At some point we’re all sitting on the taller hills, next to our cemetery, breathless, idle, and Raven says something along the lines of _It was goddamn time_ when she reaches our group. The sun bathes us in a red glow, the sky in pretty gradients of purple to pink, and we watch it together, speechless. Its warmth chases cold away from our bones, and I’m taken by a contigent sense of peacefulness like I haven’t felt since stepping on the ground; it’s shaky, but it’s there. Day ten — plus weeks and weeks — feels like the first day all over. We did it, I tell myself again, looking around at the faces of friends, living and breathing friends, and Bellamy, living and breathing Bellamy — and we're all a little bit jagged, a little bit wrong, but still. _In peace, may you leave the shore. In love, may you find the next. Safe passage on your travels until our final journey to the ground_. We’re still here.


End file.
